


Deep Beneath

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures, The Midnight Crew - Fandom
Genre: Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, Drowning, F/M, Not Humanstuck, POV Second Person, Potential Non-Adherence to Canonical Plot Points/Powers/Et Cetera, The Felt - Freeform, The Midnight Crew - Freeform, Weird Plot Shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-05-08 21:43:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5514404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your name is Spades Slick. And the thing is, you don’t know how to navigate a rip tide.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Deep Beneath

It’s as if you’re hitting a concrete wall. A frigid, turbulent, wet concrete wall. The water comes up and swells over you in one profound movement, swallowing you like the darkness of night swallowing the light of a candle, all but snuffing you out with that first blow. For a second, everything is erased from your brain, leaving a still moment of absolute tranquility. Suspended, unfeeling for a flicker of a moment, leaving you completely blank with nothing but the quiet murmur of the tide to plague your thoughts.

Then your senses jerk back into working order. There’s a tremendous rushing of silver bubbles rising up before you, evidence of the air that’s rapidly and quite alarmingly escaping your reach. Air. Fuck, you have to get to the surface. You begin to churn the water with your limbs in frantic maneuvers. The will to live, your emotions, the cold around you--it all rushes in, delivering bursts of adrenaline like gunshots to your veins with each pound of your heart. You’re determined to get out of this alive, more determined than you’ve ever been. You’ve got shit to do, things to experience, and you sure as hell don’t have any time for death.

Your name is Spades Slick. And the thing is, you don’t know how to navigate a rip tide.

Your hands beat against current, movements fruitless despite how you try to coordinate your motions to yield success. Even the strongest swimmer would be utterly housed by the undertow you find yourself caught in and you would only consider yourself a relatively capable one. It’s eating you up, forcing the air out of your body, replacing the space left behind with harsh salinity. Lungs pumping in overdrive, choking on the water, you let out a primal cry that’s swallowed by the sea. Even this brief minute has you being dragged down by some abhorrent hand, farther into the depths, away from the air and the sky and your crew, to a place where they’re replaced by quiet and blackness and death.

The struggle kills your survival instinct first. After the exhaustion of the ordeal, death almost starts to look tempting. Your chest still heaves, trying to spit out water that just keeps being replaced, and every last one of your muscles burns and trembles as you continue to kick and paddle. You’re slowing now, and you wonder if it’s really worth it to keep fighting if you can’t win. Oxygen’s being depleted from your body; it’s as if it’s terrified and running the fuck away from you as fast as its little oxygen legs can carry it. It’s hopeless, you think. You should just give in.

Mother of fuck, are you tired. It’d be so easy to just go to sleep forever.

Something happens before the last traces of your life are obliterated. Through half-closed eyes, you see a lithe figure dart towards you, hooking an arm around your neck. Your hand languidly moves to remove the arm when it tightens; a reflex, barely active. Haven’t you had enough already? Someone trying to kill you seems slightly over the top. Suddenly, there’s a shift, one not entirely physical, followed by the wholly disorienting feeling of your body disconnecting with the corporeal realm. You’re fading out around the edges, transcending to something beyond…

And then you’re lying on sand, the wind whipping around you and sticking grains to your soaked form. Finally your lungs’ convulsing is put to use and you cough up brine onto the ground. As you shudder, a small, pathetic lump on the ground, you hear a familiar voice. One that always sends an angry thrill up your spine.

Seems that you’ve gotten yourself into quite the bind, Spades, says Sn0wman, voice mockingly soft.

On instinct, you go to snarl something acerbic, but end up making a hoarse croak instead. You see her feet beside you and reach out as if to cling to them, strangle them, claw them to pieces. Several rasped obscenities attempt to exit your body before you start hacking again. If you looked up, if you had the strength to, you’re absolutely certain you’d see her mouth quirked in a condescending smile, replicating exactly the smile that she’s given you hundreds of times before. She says you’re welcome before shifting back from your grasping hands and fading away.

Fingers clenching onto nothingness, you growl, then yell in frustration. Your throat screams back at you in agonized protest. Why the fuck would that bitch save you? You could’ve done it yourself, damn it! A wave of crippling weariness overwhelms you and you slumps back to the ground, absolutely freezing. Your thoughts turn to what’s now become the most pressing topic at current: your crew. No doubt they saw you go over, despite the utter insanity of the fight. You sure as hell ain’t telling them about this whole Sn0wman thing. Not when you haven’t figured it out yourself. And when you do, you might not even tell them then; there’s no real reason for them to know the situation.

After a few minutes, you hear Boxcars’s voice, still distant but drawing closer. He’s hollering something fierce, shouting your name every few seconds. Better get your sorry ass into gear. With one arm you push against the ground, managing to stagger upright even with the sand slipping and sliding around your stumbling feet. You look towards the road leading up to the cliff that you’d recently taken a bit of a dive off of; if you’d been smarter you wouldn’t have allowed them green assholes to back you up to the edge in the first place. And as you let your gaze drift wearily back, you spot the getaway van parked haphazardly on the section of road closest to you, with all three other members of the Crew making their way to you over the sand. If only the Felt had occupied the a few more minutes, given you a little fucking time to recover before starting to spew cover-ups.

At least they’re all alive and in the present.

Boxcars reaches you first. Boss, are you alright? he asks, examining you with concern. He adds that holy shit, you look like somethin’ the cat dragged in. Yeah, yeah, you know, you snap back. Then you clear your throat, wincing in pain. A coughing fit interrupts your next sentence and you have to muscle through it in order to speak. You say that you’re fine, lucky you only got sent on a swim instead a’ into another month. Incredulity fills each pair eyes looking at you, and you stare right back, daring them to argue. Let’s get back to the hideout you order, starting off without waiting, pushing away your shivering with irritation.

As all four of you get into the car, you catch Droog’s look out of the corner of your eye. Just a slight look, barely noticeable by anyone who doesn’t know Droog’s varying degrees of looks like the back of his hand, but enough of a look for you to bristle at. Enough of a look to imply at Droog isn’t going to be duped at all by your weak excuses. Enough of a look that you think maybe Droog saw something that he isn’t letting on. Paranoia could see the second-in-command’s next words as reinforcing that fact. That seemed like an intense current down there he says, tone almost nonchalant. It’s good that you made it out. Settling into the driver’s seat, he starts the vehicle and begins to pull away. 

A’ course you made it out, you reply scathingly. You takes off your sodden jacket and turn on the air, which hits you in a cold blast. There’s a grinding noise as you clamps your teeth together to keep them from chattering. Shoulda waited til the fucking car was warmed up. Intelligent. You say that he must have a serious fucking lack of faith in you, because a little doggie paddling ain’t that extraordinarily difficult.

Droog lets his pointed gaze drift out towards the ocean, which is as inky as the sky above, churning and frothing with huge, sucking waves. Then he looks back at the road. He says that he didn’t doubt you for a minute.

 

♠♡♢♣

 

It wasn’t enough that you and your team managed to get themselves ambushed by the Felt. It wasn’t enough that you’d gotten yourself thrown off a cliff. No, your spadesmate, the motherfucking Black Queen herself, just had to waltz up and rescue your ass for no ready reason.

There’s absolutely nothing more humiliating than the fact that you were saved by Sn0wman. You’d be grateful to her if she were anyone else, even if that anyone else was still your kismesis. You’d be glad to live to fight another day, to fight her another day, to keep that lovely rivalry up and running and black as ever. But this isn’t anyone else. It’s Sn0wman. Not only is it not something you’d expect from her, the way she did it made it seem like it was out of pity, charity. Like you weren’t going to live if it wasn’t for her, because you were too weak.

And the fact of the matter is that you  _ were _ too weak. That righteous cunt, that absolute piece of shit is the only reason that you lived through that. You would’ve drowned, your bones would’ve been picked clean by whatever beasts live near the floor of the sea. But with the sheer amount of resentment it causes you, you’d almost rather have been sent to your death. Maybe it was your time to go.

You don’t want to have to be thankful.

Your brain’s been chewing over it for the past few days. It’s put you in an even fouler mood than normal; you’ve been either snapping at your cohorts or sitting in silence, glowering sullenly at nothing, usually with a knife in you hand to idly play with. Them tiptoeing around you only serves to piss you off further, as if their careful mannerisms are planned just to directly point out your frustration. For Christ’s sake, why won’t these assholes just act normal? What the fuck is there to be afraid of? You mean, besides stab wounds. Cause you’ve seriously contemplated stabbing them.

But then, is that really any different than usual?

There comes a breaking point. The middle of the day has you sitting at the table, once more glaring at the wall, with Droog sitting across from you, Deuce over on the couch and Boxcars god-knows-where. Hunting down some dame or another, maybe. After a time, you squint over at your second. Even though he appears to be entirely engrossed in his newspaper, you can tell by the squareness of the other man’s shoulders that he’s guarded. If you don’t get up and outta here to sort this out, then these dipshits are never gonna relax. Snarling slightly to yourself, which scares the shit out of Deuce, you punctuate your thoughts by slipping your knife back your his card deck. I’m going out, you say to Droog; you think you hear a quiet sigh of relief accompanying the curt nod of a reply. You see how it is. Fucker doesn’t have the decency to keep it to himself, that's what.

Post hat-donning and jacket-putting-on, you climb up the ladder and out the manhole. The sun, as always, is glaringly bright, looking down from a greenish sky. Even all these years later, you still hate this goddamn planet; as much as you may have disliked you position on Derse, you’d rather have that beautiful sky of velvety pitch than this cyan-and-lime bullshit. No matter. Now’s not really the time to contemplate your general animosity towards the world; you’ve been doing enough of that as of late. Now you’ve got a goal. Something that’ll certainly get you to cease your brooding.

The Felt Manor.

Electing to steal the van, you park a block away and arrive on foot at the looming building, sickeningly emerald-hued under the searing rays of the fiery disk in the sky. God, you abhor it. Every inch of it. Every soul in it. From the top, to the bottom, to the clocks and the time shenanigans and the ludicrous amounts of doors, rooms and stairways. It seems that every time you enters the damn place some sort of horrifying twist screws up all of your plans and you have to back the fuck out with crew in tow. How ironic that you’ve become so accustomed to entering through the window and making yourself right at home--rather, as much at home as you can be in Sn0wman’s bedroom.

She’s waiting for you. She always is. You don’t know if she predicts that you’re coming or is just always sitting in that same chair, the one that she’s invariably and perfectly arranged in, but you wouldn’t doubt it at all if it was the former. She’s there, in the classic cross-legged pose, as if you’ve entered a museum with only one statue. Gazing at you through slitted white eyes, deadly and alluring and utterly repulsive as ever.

Slick, she greets. Sn0wman, you reply, mocking her tone by badly copying her inflection on your name.

For a time you simply watch one another, reticent, each a predator carefully gauging minute reactions of the face and body of its nemesis. There’s a clock on the wall, ticking away as you make your observations; every so often you twitch at the sound the movement of the second hand makes. It’s been on more than one occasion that you’ve destroyed a clock in this room in the throes of some anger or passion, and every time you return there’s a new one to replace it. You know that she does it to piss you off, because time doesn’t particularly matter to her in a way that it does to others. Eventually you have to break the silence, if only to drive the ticking out of your ears. You inquire politely as to why the fuck she stuck her neck out to save you.

She says that it wasn’t particularly sticking her neck out. The rest of the boys being right there and all. You say that’s bullshit, you were more than a reasonable distance away from the “boys,” and that you didn’t see any of the other Felt jumping up to swan dive after you. She says that she doubts any of them are particularly capable of executing a dive at all, let alone a swan dive. You ask if she’ll get to the fuckin’ point. She says you have very little patience. You say no shit, Sherlock. She says patience is a virtue. You ask if she seriously thinks you have any virtues.

She, of course, says no, absolutely not.

There’s another pause. Well? I ain’t got all damned day, you hiss, fingers tapping on the windowsill. In response she laughs lightly, and then suddenly cuts herself off with a short, exasperated sigh, as if she can’t decide what emotion she’s feeling. For a second you can almost see the struggle come through in the twist of her features, the blaze of an agony expressed only in her eyes, before she sighs again. You’re fairly certain you hear her murmur something about a timeline, but you can’t be certain, because her words were only just audible.

What? you say.

She replies that you’re meant to kill her.

What? you say again, this time absolutely bewildered. You? Kill her? But to kill her is to end the universe, that’s a commonly known fact--at least, you think it is. It’s certainly well known amongst your crew. And as much as you’d love to, you’re really not sure that you would.

That foreign agony is in her eyes again as she repeats herself. It’s not a look you’ve ever seen on her face before, and you don’t really understand why it’s there. Perhaps it’s the fact that she knows who her own killer will be--and she does, of course she does, with an omnipotent boss in the house. However, the look disappears as she adds that she would’ve left you there had it not been for that.

While her reaction is a mystery to you, you know exactly the rationale behind yours. You’re the one to end everything that exists in this dimension with you. Derse, Alternia, Skaia, the whole clusterfuck. Along with the life of your kismesis. That’s kinda a lot to handle. You let a long, slow breath out, leaning back on the wall with gaze down. You ask her why she told you. She says that she couldn’t think of an excuse in time, with a bit of a cynical grin. You say that’s also bullshit. She says she knows. You ask if she knows when. She says she can’t tell you, but it’s not now, and you’ll know once the time comes. 

You say that’s also bullshit. She assures you that it’s not. It’s probably the least bullshit thing she’s told you thus far.

Now the silence is rich with unspoken thoughts. You continue to look at the floor, examining the jade boards with feigned interest in the running of the grains. Really, you’re just trying to distract yourself. You’d almost rather that you didn’t know the reason that she saved you, but you don’t know exactly why you’d prefer ignorance. Staying in that position, you hear her rise and approach you, only shifting as she presses her fingers against the bottom of your chin to lift your face. She’s done that before, but those other times it’s always been as if she’s appraising you, like a cow at auction, or a piece of meat. That’s usually about the time when you rip her arm away and punch her in the face. But you allow it this time, because she’s looking into your eyes instead of over your features, and her own are filled with an indescribable sorrow and a knowing that only comes with having seen the end.

You ask if she’s pregnant or somethin’, because she seems real moody.

She tells you to shut your mouth.

What you do next is familiar, and yet unknown. The feeling of her body against yours, the soft scrape of your carapaces grinding together, the heat and the panting breaths is absolutely not new. But not like this. In all the times that you two have coupled it’s never been like this; it’s always been raw, and savage, and violent, and bloody. A couple of animals in heat rutting until spent. This time around you have no clue what you feel towards her, and you think she feels much the same, judging by the tenderness she shows to you. It mirrors the tenderness you give back, and that’s an action you’re surprised to see coming from yourself. Instead of tearing fragile skin and crunching down on hard shell, you’re caressing, giving smaller bites than you even give to your flushed flings, and her hands trail down your back as if they’re brushing against something rare, precious. Like you’ve become the statue in the museum. You pretend she isn’t crying when you feel the sob rise up in her chest, pressed close to you, because if she was that’d probably rip the world apart without you killing her. Sn0wman would never cry. That’d go against the very rules of nature.

And when you’re both finished, you dress and leave her lying naked on the bed, exiting back out through the window. You can tell that your cohorts sense a difference in you when you get back to headquarters, but none of them mention it. It’s wise of them.

 

♠♡♢♣

 

The only other time you ever see that look from her is right before you put a bullet in her chest.


End file.
